Last Tuesday I participated in our department management retreat, where we worked out the principles guiding our work. The meeting was in the Study Centre Gerzensee of the Swiss National Bank. It is located partially in a Château surrounded by a beautiful park overlooking a lake, with a fantastic view of the Alps in the background. I took some shots of the springtime ambiance in the park.

The idyllic impression got a dissonance, when a biting smell came from a terrace below the front, where a gardener  in a  protective suit covering the whole body and a big gas mask was spraying poison over the rose trees – calling me brutally back into the present day environmental pollution.

A horse statue galloping through the garden. The horse is a symbol of the vital power of the fiery signs of the zodiac, where the head represents Aries, the body Leo and the tail Sagittarius.

The satyr Pan playing his flute in the garden and evoking the flowers from out of the earth

Enjoying the horn of plenty

An Easter egg on the top of a fountain

The fountain of fresh energy

A fountain in front of the Château in the sunlight

A mighty tree in the garden

Spring ambiance under a tree

Alley leading to the lake

The garden of the little Château, the seminar centre

An old cannon in front of the entrance, with a spiral inside

Magnolia bud

Fishes enjoying playing with water, with the Alps in the background

A friend sent me the link to the fascinating Flame Generator, where you can create your flame artwork. It is the result of an experimental project of Peter Blaškovič, a 3D animator and designer. He writes about his generator:

“I think with tools which inspire you, everyone can be an artist. You can try it here, change different brush settings and paint your own flame paintings. … It’s not easy to explain all brush parameters, so I leave this for your experimentation.”

Enjoy doing your own flame experiments.

A little game of flames generated with “Flame”.

Mandalas are very old geometric structures illustrating rhythmic principles of universal order. A friend sent me the link to a website with an extremely beautiful mandala animation and exquisite music. You can create changing mandalas by moving the mouse or playing with the keyboard. The first music playing is a sublime intonation of the age-old Gayatri mantram. The site is called “Light-Weaver.com” and inspired by the teachings of the Tibetan Master / Alice A. Bailey. It has the motto: “To the Glory of the One”. The site also offers a calendar of the Full Moon and New Moon dates and times, similar to the calendar of the month of the World Teacher Trust.

On the site you also find very beautiful free mandalas

A free mandala from the website light-weaver.com (c)

A beautiful video with pictures of Nicholas Roerich and music of Vangelis.

In November – December 09 I went through some deep experiences, which found an expression in a series of 12 paintings. The pictures speak for themselves. I called them “Images of Synthesis”. You find them for download and as powerpoints here. The content of the images relates to the wisdom teachings as given by the WTT – Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar. (Due to a technical mistake this blogpost published on Jan 14th stayed as an unpublished draft in the admin until Jan. 18th.)

Spring Awakening – Silent Joy – Jubilating

A friend sent a YouTube link to sublime songs of Loreena McKennitt – a Canadian singer, composer, harpist and pianist of Irish and Scottish descent. She is famous for writing, recording and performing world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes. Have a look at these beautiful videos:

Here are some more songs:

• Caravanserai
• Night from the Alhambra, a DVD document of her performance at Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain.
• The Mystics Dream
• Dante’s Prayer

This is the text of “Dante’s Prayer” (an excellent video):

When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say
there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in
the light of the stars

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Then the mountain rose before me
By the deep well of desire
From the fountain of forgiveness
Beyond the ice and fire

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We’ll rise above these earthly cares

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
Please remember me

You find more songs of Loreena McKennitt on YouTube.

An Indian friend sent me a very impressive powerpoint about Doug Landis, a quadriplegic artist paralysed from the neck down. He is drawing the delicate pictures of animals with his mouth, thus demonstrating a great mastery of his will in spite of the limitations of his body. You can see the pictures on his website.

From the website of Doug Landis (c)

I came across fantastic photos of the Omo People in Ethiopia, by Hans Sylvester – very poetical expressions of a dream-like union with nature. You can also see these photos in some beautiful YouTube videos or here, with music.

A comment said: “Enjoy the photos for what they are: STAGED. These people do NOT adorn themselves this way naturally. They do paint their skin, but not this way. It’s okay for this guy to have ‘collaborated’ with these people, but then identify it as such.”

Friends of mine had been in Ethiopia last year, probably also at this Omo valley, and brought some photos of these people with their body paintings, not staged, but probably also dressed for tourists. Nevertheless, they are beautiful. So these photos here are not from the video, but from my friends.

Photos by a friend

A friend from Buenos Aires today sent me the link to an article of NY Times from Sept 16 on “The Holy Grail of the Unconscious”, about the “Red Book” of the psychiatrist C.G. Jung, unpublished up to now and which is going to appear soon. The book looks like a medieval volume, with paintings and decorations. There is a screen which gives some impressions. The writer describes the content: “Between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.” An interesting article about a life along the borders of genius and madness.

The dream stories reminded me of another person who lived nearly 900 years earlier, Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179), a great German visionary, healer and naturopath, composer, herbalist and abbess. Her impressive mystical pictures resemble Eastern paintings. There is a film about her life (in German) coming out this week, “Vision“, and you can see some trailers. Her images have impressed me very much already years ago.

Both sources are deeply spiritual journeys which influenced many people on their path.

“Cosmos”, by Hildegard von Bingen

A friend just sent me the link to a video of Ani Choying Drolma, a Buddhist nun from Nepal, singing a beautiful mantra of Compassion Buddha, to develop one’s own compassion qualities to heal oneself and to heal others. Ani Choying uses the income from her songs to finance a school in Nepal. Another beautiful song is the Ganesha Mantram.

Photo from the video